Please help w/ first attempt at SW

[epaz]

Thanks ahead of time for an help! I recently aquired a 225g salteater tank from a family member. In its hayday it was an awesome tank but after a death in the family the tank died as well ie: completely neglected. Anyway I brought it home cleaned it, the substrate (crushed coral) the live rock ( was covered in algae) and the sump. I used no chemicals during this just scrubbed. I set the tank back up and got my salinity to where it should be and tested my water all readings are good except nitrate is off the chart. Should I just let it go for awhile? Its been running for about a week. Again thanks for any help I get

 

[Lobstercrazy]

Let it run it needs to cycle through that can take a while once your ammonia is 0 and nitrates are very close I not zero then your ready. If you have live rock most people use it to cycle the tank..

 

[Mebbid]

Thanks ahead of time for an help! I recently aquired a 225g salteater tank from a family member. In its hayday it was an awesome tank but after a death in the family the tank died as well ie: completely neglected. Anyway I brought it home cleaned it, the substrate (crushed coral) the live rock ( was covered in algae) and the sump. I used no chemicals during this just scrubbed. I set the tank back up and got my salinity to where it should be and tested my water all readings are good except nitrate is off the chart. Should I just let it go for awhile? Its been running for about a week. Again thanks for any help I get

Assuming there is nothing alive in the tank you will basically be starting off at ground 0 for cycling. Add some pure ammonia to the tank so it is up to 4ppm and then wait to see what happens to it. The first part of your cycle is fully finished when it runs the 4ppm dose of ammonia down to 0 ammonia / nitrite. Once it has done that just keep dosing the ammonia up to 1ppm daily until the nitrates start dropping.

 

[huma-huma]

If you keep dumping 1ppm ammonia into the tank everyday, without water changes, the nitrates will just continue to climb

 

[Mebbid]

If the live rock can't process more than 1ppm of nitrate a day then there is a serious issue

 

[huma-huma]

If the live rock can't process more than 1ppm of nitrate a day then there is a serious issue

What? Again, even in a cycled tank, dumping any amount of ammonia into the tank daily is just going to cause the nitrate level to rise continuously. Nitrate is the en product of the ammo conversion.

 

[Mebbid]

What? Again, even in a cycled tank, dumping any amount of ammonia into the tank daily is just going to cause the nitrate level to rise continuously. Nitrate is the en product of the ammo conversion.

Then the nitrate gets consumed by anaerobic bacteria found in the live rock to create nitrogen gas. It's the entire reason we specifically use live rock and deep sand beds.

For example: I cured about 40lbs of dry rock and my nitrates went off the chart at 120+. I completely ignored it and 2 weeks later when I tested it again my nitrates were at 0

 

[huma-huma]

Actually live rock is more more the aerobic conversion of ammonia to nitrite then to nitrate. The anerobic conversion to nitrogen takes place in the oxygen-deprived areas such as a dsb and low flow area. Still dont understand why youre telling the OP that the tank will take care of nitrates by itself, because it wont. This final step in the nitrogen cycle may help tanks to go a bit longer between Water changes but nonetheless water changes are still needed to remove the majority of nitrate buildup

 

[Mebbid]

The live rock filtration is two fold. the deeper you go in the live rock the more anoxic it becomes.

Understanding Nitrate | Reefworks
Take a look at the third section "Reducing Nitrate with Bacteria"

I'm telling the OP that the live rock takes care of nitrates because I've personally seen it happen. Whether or not it takes care of enough nitrate in a stocked tank depends entirely on how well the system is balanced.

 

[ivan_dalmatia]

What? Again, even in a cycled tank, dumping any amount of ammonia into the tank daily is just going to cause the nitrate level to rise continuously. Nitrate is the en product of the ammo conversion.

Not really if there is no fish in the tank creating food for the bacteria (poop, waste food...) ammonia is like a supplement

 

[huma-huma]

Not really if there is no fish in the tank creating food for the bacteria (poop, waste food...) ammonia is like a supplement

This doesnt really make sense. Youre telling me that the ammonia is a supplement? Why else would someone put the ammonia in the tank? Its to feed the bb. And like i said, if you continuously feed ammonia to a tank, the nitrate levels are going to rise. Sure there is the possibility that a dsb or other might slow the rise pf nitrates, but in about 80% of the time, we need to do pwc to remove nitrates. So why tell the op that live rock will remove nitrates??

 

[ivan_dalmatia]

Cause it does, It turns it into tonight for Scott's

 

[ivan_dalmatia]

Cause it does, It turns it into tonight for Scott's

Sorry the phone loves to correct me,
Does it not turn into nitrogen gas?

 

[ivan_dalmatia]

But I do agree with you once your tank is cycled better off feeding it shrimp or something else

 

[Mebbid]

This doesnt really make sense. Youre telling me that the ammonia is a supplement? Why else would someone put the ammonia in the tank? Its to feed the bb. And like i said, if you continuously feed ammonia to a tank, the nitrate levels are going to rise. Sure there is the possibility that a dsb or other might slow the rise pf nitrates, but in about 80% of the time, we need to do pwc to remove nitrates. So why tell the op that live rock will remove nitrates??

If nitrates weren't removed with live rock then it would change how the entire reef keeping hobby works. Nano reef tanks would be impossible to keep without doing daily water changes and yet people keep them and are very successful with them.

 

[huma-huma]

If nitrates weren't removed with live rock then it would change how the entire reef keeping hobby works. Nano reef tanks would be impossible to keep without doing daily water changes and yet people keep them and are very successful with them.

I think that you misunderstood me before, im not debating that live rock converts nitrates, im simply saying that to tell someone that their liverock will convert nitrates to nitrogen is a bit misleading and harmful. Sure if a hobbyist is lucky, they may experience some nitrate conversion in their tanks, but they are still going to need to do pwcs to remove the biggest portion of nitrates (along with washing filters, removing excess detritius and skimming) an as i said before, this nitrate conversion just allows us to go longer between pwc